The American Poet Of Chinese Wisdom

This thesis will study the Chinese elements in Rexroth’s translation and poetic works and trace the cause of his ideas, and therefore provide a useful perspective to promote cultural exchange and mutual understanding. Kenneth Rexroth is a pioneer in the American "Beat Generation," but his special contribution to modern American literature is his devotion to introducing classical Chinese poetry, as he is a pioneer in translating those poems and also in composing his own poems following the Chinese style.This thesis reads both Rexroth’s translations and his poems in depth and analyzes the Chinese influence on his literary creation. Specifically, I shall point out the resemblance between these classical Chinese poems that he chose to translate and the poems that he later composed on his own.The relationship is demonstrated in three aspects. First, in terms of content, Kenneth Rexroth’s way to depict landscape in his poems employs the same kind of perception of nature as in classical Chinese poetry. Second, similar emphasis is devoted to the expression mode of personal emotion such as romantic love, friendship and the desire to live as a hermit. Thirdly, Rexroth absorbs and internalizes Chinese philosophy and ideal through translating, and exhibits such philosophy in his poems. Therefore, it is translation of Chinese poems that plays a decisive role in the formation of Kenneth Rexroth’s unique poetic style.Translation is a process of influence and internalization. Since Rexroth has translated hundreds of classical Chinese poems with personal interest in important poets such as Li Ch’ing Chao and Tu Fu, his role as a creative poem translator inevitably influences his poetry writing. His own works stand out among his fellow American poets with distinctive traces of Chinese elements. At last, the influence of classical Chinese poetics on Rexroth is an evidence of the importance and beauty of communication between different cultures.